Perry’s the first candidate that I think has a serious chance to take the nomination from Romney. He’s somebody the Republican establishment can support.
His biggest liability will be the Bush factor. Being Bush’s successor in the Texas governorship will make it easy to portray him as trying to be Bush’s successor in the White House. And Bush still has a lot of negatives attached to his memory. Obama will love it if he can run against another Bush surrogate.
This straw poll was important enough to eliminate Plawenty, yet Romney still goes on after a worse showing.
Cain claimed he did well, because he was expected to do poorly and he reached that level, therefore his campaign was a success.
Politics can cause weird and tortured logic.
Romney’s claim is based on the fact that he wasn’t officially in the straw poll. He’s saying he did well considering he was only getting write-in votes.
The entire Iowa caucuses are highly suspect in any case, there have been countless articles in the past weeks showing that there actually isn’t a particularly predictive value to the outcome of the Iowa caucuses. It’s stupid to ignore the early primaries entirely and pull a Giuliani (do nothing until Florida), but it’s not really a major issue to more or less ignore Iowa if you keep national attention and at least do a bit of work there.
Romney has very little organization in Iowa because his campaign has chosen not to focus on Iowa; however he has made appearances at the Iowa State Fair and things of that nature. He also has the benefit of being the early front runner so he is keeping his name in the air without having to expend a huge amount of energy in Iowa. Basically I think he’s doing the right thing in regards to Iowa.
If you compare it to Giuliani who was never the front runner, didn’t even make any real attempt to get any national attention prior to the big primary in Florida, and whose campaign quickly ended I would say Romney’s is a good example of how to focus on the important primaries without destroying your candidacy.
Bush sort of did the same thing, he lost some early primaries to McCain but his organization and campaigning in South Carolina was simply overwhelming and McCain’s campaign went off the tracks there, Bush’s organization in the Super Tuesday states was also impossible for McCain to seriously challenge. Romney is following a good strategy of focusing on what actually wins the nomination but still keeping visibility. As the front runner I think he essentially has the luxury of not over-exerting himself in Iowa or New Hampshire. If you look historically both of those states have had weird outcomes in the past that have not ultimately been predictive. South Carolina on the other hand, every GOP nominee at least since Reagan has won South Carolina, you cannot say the same about Iowa/New Hampshire. Mathematically SC is also much more important in terms of delegate count as well.
In reality that’s exactly what South Carolina is designed to do; the party’s preferred candidate is given massive support in South Carolina and it makes the outcome of the nomination less influenced by New Hampshire (a somewhat strange state with New England Republicans who will often have very different positions than the national party) and Iowa, by giving a powerful front runner the ability to overcome a fringe upstart candidate since SC has more delegates than Iowa and New Hampshire combined.
If you look at the situation in Iowa Romney came in third but one of the people in front of him is a native Iowan and the other was Ron Paul, whose Presidential candidacy is a joke even though he may actually win a random primary or caucus somewhere along the way.
Perry is the only serious challenger, and he is probably who Romney is most concerned about right now. If Perry is strong over the next few months he could take the “frontrunner” crown from Romney and it could be Romney who ends up needing to fight for a win in South Carolina to re-establish himself.
A quick look at the Iowa Caucuses on who won and who ended up being nominated:
1980: George H.W. Bush - Reagan won nom
1988: Bob Dole - George H.W. won nom (Pat Robertson won the straw poll, showing its lack of grounding in anything meaningful)
1996: Bob Dole - Dole won nom
2000: Bush - Bush won nom
2008: Huckabee - McCain won nom
So in the last 5 competitive Republican nomination cycles the ultimate winner has only won Iowa twice.
I don’t think Romney can get crazy enough to match the rest. The baggers will eat him alive and declare him a Liberal. Compared to them, he may be.
In 17 years of politics, Romney’s record is 5 w 18 losses. ,so I read today. that does not cause enthusiasm or confidence.
I think Perry has already become the front-runner in the two weeks since you wrote this. The last CNN pollis eye-popping; 27% for Perry versus 14% for Romney. Further down you have 19% for Palin and Bachman who will probably pick Perry over Romney. The 9% for Giuliani will probably pick Romney but it’s hard to see him getting too many votes from the rest. Perry will probably win Iowa easily and that will give him huge momentum for South Carolina where I am guessing he polls well among primary voters.
I’ve only been back for a wee little bit, but I will tell you one thing: Recovering Republican is the real deal. I don’t know why he puts recovering in front. If he prefers Perry, I guarantee you so does most of the rest of the Republican primary voters. When they’re among themselves, Perry is it. Bachmann they’re sympathetic to, but the one that really makes their day is Perry.
Note carefully his opinions of Mccain and Dole, and even more revealingly, his opinion on the states’ right to secede at will. That marks him as the mainstream of the Republican Party.
The mainstream: not only do they not have a problem with Perry’s secession speech, it’s considered a minimum qualification. As is his little remark about Bernanke (a Republican who was nominated by a Republican, remember) being treasonous.
Mccain and Dole would have been mainstream before Reagan. Those days are long, long gone.
Which means: Romney has as much chance of being the nominee as George Soros.
Perry may not be a lock; a lot of folks outside Texas haven’t forgotten that he used to be a Democrat, voted for Clinton’s tax increases, was Al Gore’s campaign manager, etc. and switched teams when it became clear that the wind here was blowing from blue over to red. Some Republicans think he’s the real deal, but I understand a lot of the old guard and their contributors semi-privately consider him a candy-assed opportunist who’ll flip whenever it’s politically expedient to do so. If it is Perry, though, who’s the running mate? Palin or Bachmann would make some of the far right faint with delight, but Perry’s got them already - he needs the middle.
Perry switched in 1989. He was Al Gore’s manager in Texas in the 1988 election, not 2000. It’s not even remotely relevant.
Voted for Clinton’s tax increases? Huh? When did he serve in Congress?
This is precisely why I’m not going to pay one bit of attention to polls for now. Maybe in January I’ll start idly glancing at them.
Yeah. We’ve been saying for months that the conservative wing was going to coalesce around one candidate. The only question was who that was going to be. And Perry has been mentioned as a major possibility since before he declared.
So what has changed? There’s a rush of enthusiasm because Perry is neither Bachmann nor Palin, but nobody outside of their most fervent supporters thought they were remotely electable.
Perry has yet to show that he is a national candidate, that he can put together a good campaign team, that he can get the backing of the large donors outside Texas, or that he can win a primary outside of the conservative states that Romney has already written off. None of the polls right now take any of that into account.
Saying Romney was going to be the candidate was betting against the polls’ lack of enthusiasm for him from the beginning. Until reality changes, there’s no reason to change the prediction.
:smack: Sorry, wrong Bill. Not Bill Clinton, Bill Clements, former Texas Governor. In 1987 Rick Perry, then a Democrat, voted in favor of Governor Clements’ $5.7 billion tax increase, the largest increase ever proposed in the state. I’m not exactly privy to those circles (not even remotely privy, to be honest), but the tax increases while a Democrat and past political backing of Al Gore may have some of the old schoolers clicking their tongues, according to the entirely unreliable source of a Republican friend I ate lunch with yesterday. Seriously, it’s the first I’ve heard that Perry has anything less than the undying support of the right, but it makes some sense and seems relevant so I thought I’d pass it along for the sake of conversation.
I actually think this would give him more cred in the conservative circles, a la Reagan being a former Dem/union prez/etc. He can say “Been there, done that, and it sucks balls. The only way forward is to [insert conservative talking point here].”
Apparently Romney has gone McCain '08, trying to suck up to the Tea Party… Problem is, they aren’t having it.
Freedomworks is planning to protest Romney’s inclusion in an appearance in a Tea Party sponsored event in Concord, NH
With South Carolina coming up, Romney will have to embrace the derp, before he gets herped.
Perry will have to be gagged to make it. He keeps saying Palinesque things that are nutty. Turn off your brain and follow him blindly. Then he has to backtrack,. You would have to be a deadhead repub to follow him. He is a terrible candidate.
What Perry did 20+ years ago will have minimal impact on his chances. It is a well-known fact that many Southern conservatives were Democrats for historical reasons and then switched to the Republicans.
Perry is the most conservative candidate who could plausibly become president. He has serious governing experience unlike Bachmann and Palin. Though the idea of a "Texas miracle" under Perry is mostly myth, it will be highly persuasive to GOP primary voters. By contrast Bachmann and Palin will struggle to point to a single major achievement in government even from a conservative perspective.
Perry’s problems include crony capitalism in Texas and the extremism of his views but they won’t hurt much in the primary. Investigative stories on his Texas record will be dismissed by conservatives as “lamestream media” bias. His comments on Bernanke were beyond the pale but they will only help persuade conservatives that he is one of them.
The eat each other debate season is coming up. This is when the Repubs savage each other on stage due to ruthless ambition and ego. They will chop each other apart for our viewing pleasure. I have plenty of popcorn on hand. It will be great TV.
Every stupid think Perry has done or said will be dredged up. Palin can never explain away her quitting . Romney will have to fight off a liberal label and a serious religious problem. Bachmann will have to act like she isn’t nuts. that will be very hard to do.
Obama is not having a savage season to contend with. He can be a spectator like the rest of us.
No, don’t you see, that just proves their point! Government is evil, incompetent, and corrupt, as proven by their complete lack of achievements in government. If they’d only tried to make those achievements privately, they’d have succeeded. So we must elect them to ensure that government continues to do nothing!